[Image 1: a tweet from ayan, @/artan_ayan on twitter (now known as X)
The Director of the UN’s New York office just resigned after thirty years at the organisation over the UN’s handling of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
The entirety of his resignation letter is a necessary read but this first page blew me away.
Image 2 transcription: the UN’s letterhead and the following letter;
Dear High Commissioner, This will be my last official communication to you as Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
I write at this moment of great anguish for the world. including for many of our colleagues. once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it. As someone who has investigated human rights in Palestine since the 1980s, lived in Gaza as a UN human rights advisor in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights missions to the country before and since, this is deeply personal to me.
I also worked in these through the genocides against the Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, the Yazidi, and the Rohingya. In each case, when each case settled on the horrors that had been perpetuated against defenseless civilian populations, it became painfully clear that we had failed in our duty to meet the imperatives of prevention of mass atrocities, of protection of the vulnerable, and of accountability for perpetrators. And so it has been with successive waves of murder and persecution against the Palestinians throughout the entire life of the UN.
High Commissioner, we are failing again.
As a human rights laywer with more than three decades of experience in the field, I know well that the concept of genocide has often been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms are accompanied by Israeli military units. Across the land, arpartheid rules.
This is a text-book [sic] case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What’s more, the governments of the United States, The United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations “to ensure respect” for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities.
Volker turk, High Commissioner for Human Rights Palais Wilson, Geneva
To keep Gazans connected through these telecomms blackouts, activists have arranged for distributing free e-SIMs to people in Gaza. Anyone can buy an e-SIM and send the activation code (usually a QR code) to Mirna el Helbawi who is coordinating distribution.
1. Go to https://getnomad.app/. click on the menu in the top right-hand side, and click on Shop Plans then Data
2. Go to Regional Plans and select “Middle East” (people are reporting that this option has been removed, so if you don’t find it, either seect “Global” or search “Israel” in the search bar at the top of the page, and select that)
3. Choose a plan, agree to terms, and pay
4. Wait for an email with a QR code
5. Save the QR code image or screenshot it, and email it to gazaesims@gmail.com
This is just one possible service. (Note that you may have seen posts about Simly which partnered and raised donations to give out free e-SIMS but they have asked for donations to stop as they raised $70k in a day and needed to figure out allocation.)
If you or someone you know needs an e-SIM, it’s the same address:
[image description: a tweet from Mirna el Helbawi @Mirna_elhelbawi reading: “We will send e-sims to ANYONE in Gaza. Not just Press and medical teams. If you’re in Gaza or have family/relatives/friends there, let us know and we will provide you internet access. gazaesims@gmail.com.” The tweet is dated October 30, 2023. End ID]
“Refusal to handle military equipment for war in Palestine
While a genocide is underway in Palestine, workers at the various airports in Belgium are seeing weapons headed for war zones.
The loading and unloading of these weapons enables the resupplying of organizations killing innocent people.
We, the different unions active in the ground handling sector, call on our members not to handle flights that ship military material to Palestine/Israel as there were also clear agreements and rules at the start of the conflict with Russia and Ukraine.
We call for an immediate ceasefire and ask the Belgian governments to be consistent and not to tolerate arms shipments through Belgian airports. As unions, we declare our solidarity with those who are taking action for peace.
don’t loose hope, there is love in life, there is community. people are coming together to protest all over the world, people are finding solidarity with each other even among the horror, people want to help. over the course of hours i saw hundreds come together from all over the world online to buy e-sim cards for the gaza reporters (they’ve succeeded in getting internet access to key online press reporters and are working to connect more), i’ve seen stories of people coming together in their grief and joy. despite the darkness there really is love. and i do believe that it is fundamental to the human condition.
Palestinians prepare food for the displaced families in the south of Gaza Strip. 10-28-2023
There are ads here on tumblr as well. Tiktok is putting warnings on videos of people who are only mentioning what is happening in palestine. Instagram is deleting accounts of people who are reporting straight from gaza.
Biden questioned the number of deaths reported in Gaza, after which the health ministry came out with a report over 200 hundred pages long with personal information on the killed individuals.
24 journalists have been killed in 21 days.
Yesterday internet and phone services in Gaza went down, due to the heavy bombardments.
The voice of the people in palestine is being silenced in every way you can imagine.
So the least you can do, is share what is going on. Use all your platforms. Even this one.
there’s something very dystopian like at the fact that we’re all supposed to continue on with our lives, go to work/school, carry on with our daily routines like we’re not witnessing three countries (sudan, congo & palestine) go through a genocide and mass ethnic cleansing right now all through our mobile phones & the internet
